Oscar Wilde Quotes (991 Quotes)

Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.

I like men who have a future and women who have a past

Those things which the English public never forgives - youth, power and enthusiasm.

I'm sure I don't know half the people who come to my house. Indeed, from all I hear, I shouldn't like to.

To have the reputation of possessing the most perfect social tact, talk to every woman as if you loved her, and to every man as if he bored you.

When one is in love one always begins by deceiving oneself, and one always ends by deceiving others. This is what the world calls a romance.

I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again.

Some people cause happiness wherever they go. Some people cause happiness whenever they go.

All trials are trials for one's life, just as all sentences are sentences of death.

I love London society I think it has immensely improved. It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics. Just what Society should be.

The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.

Newspapers. . . give us the bald, sordid, disgusting facts of life. They chronicle, with degrading avidity, the sins of the second-rate, and with the conscientiousness of the illiterate give us accurate and prosaic details. . .

Some temptations are so great it takes great courage to yield to them.

After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations.

One can only give an unbiased opinion about things that do not interest one, which is no doubt the reason an unbiased opinion is always valueless. The man who sees both sides of a question is a man who sees absolutely nothing.

A person who, because he has corns himself, always treads on other people's toes.

Experience is the name we give to our mistakes.

A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.

A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at.

No man dies for what he knows to be true. Men die for what they want to be true, for what some terror in their hearts tells them is not true.

He would stab his best friend for the sake of writing an epigram on his tombstone.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life.

The longer I live the more keenly I feel that whatever was good enough for our fathers is not good enough for us.

Each class preaches the importance of those virtues it need not exercise. The rich harp on the value of thrift, the idle grow eloquent over the dignity of labor.

He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realise.

Nobody of any real culture, for instance, ever talks nowadays about the beauty of sunset. Sunsets are quite old fashioned. . . . To admire them is a distinct sign of provincialism of temperament. Upon the other hand they go on.

In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing.

A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

Genius is an infinite capacity for giving pains.

If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.

Scepticism is the beginning of Faith.

The true critic is he who bears within himself the dreams and ideas and feelings of myriad generations, and to whom no form of thought is alien, no emotional impulse obscure.

No publisher should ever express an opinion on the value of what he publishes. That is a matter entirely for the literary critic to decide. . . .

Who is that man over there I don't know him. What is he doing Is he a conspirator Have you searched him Give him till tomorrow to confess, then hang him -- hang him

The poet is the supreme artist, for he is the master of colour and of form, and the real musician besides, and is lord over all life and all arts.

America had often been discovered before Columbus, but it had always been hushed up.

It is very vulgar to talk like a dentist when one isn't a dentist. It produced a false impression.

That is what the highest criticism really is, the record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. It is more delightful than philosophy. . .

When people talk to me about the weather, I always feel they mean something else.

Pleasure is the only thing to live for. Nothing ages like happiness.

Work is the refuge of people who have nothing better to do.

When a man has once loved a woman he will do anything for her except continue to love her.

On an occasion of this kind it becomes more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure.

Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry.

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined.

His style is chaos illumined by flashes of lightning. As a writer he has mastered everything except language.

The play was a great success, but the audience was a disaster.